A Fable for Aesop

You surely know that in the olden days kings kept in the courts a person called the Jester -- a kind of clown or joker, who was appointed to make the king and his courtiers laugh in every way he could. Once upon a time there reigned a good king named Rajendra. To get his laughs, the Jester would make fun of everyone in the kingdom; no one was spared. Even the King himself, who was fat, jovial and had long white whiskers, was a frequent butt of his jokes. But the King was a great fan of Jester, and he considered his day well begun if he could snatch some time to read the day's joke, posted by Jester on the throne-room wall.
But Rajendra was old, and his days were numbered. It was difficult now for Jester to bring even a smile to his face. Eventually the King died of his mortal illness. His son, whose name was Murkha, mounted the throne to rule in his place. Now this King had had an unhappy childhood, in spite of being a pampered prince (or perhaps just because of that) and had become bitter. Murkha had developed a permanent scowl on his face. He did not approve of laughter at all; it always disturbed him. So he sent out an edict (that means a command) banishing all jokes and imposing heavy penalties for disobeying. He went so far as to imprison the Jester because the latter could in no way stop from smiling and making jokes of all kinds. That was his life, after all! So the king threw him into a dungeon.
Even in the dungeon the Jester kept on smiling and thinking up jokes and in this way relieved the monotony of imprisonment. But throughout the country, the slightest sight of a smile resulted in the king's spies reporting to him and those people were picked up and fined or put in jail.

The news went out to the animals of the forest. They already had an Animal Union and the president of the Union called a meeting and spoke to them this way: "We have accepted the rule of human beings for all these ages. One of the reasons was that they could laugh and we could not. Now they cannot laugh. So where is their superiority over us?" This is how emotion comes to replace reasonable thought, is it not? The animals forgot all the other reasons for humans being superior.
"So now, charge, all of you; charge the city!! No more of human bondage!" They all marched into the City, all kinds of animals: bears and tigers and wolves and antelopes and snakes and rats and spiders and mosquitoes -- and the city was conquered. King Murkha was captured. The animals again got together to elect a new king, their king. Suddenly there came a boisterous laughter that startled everyone.
It was the Jester, laughing to see the king held captive by a cordon of cats and
dogs and mice and so on.
Now the president of the Animal Union came to his senses. He had to make
a quick decision. "This city life," he said, "is not for us, we know it. Here is a man
who can laugh. Let him be the King, for he will surely bring back laughter into all the country." The Union agreed, and the Jester was duly crowned King.

A pessimist is somebody who is afraid that somewhere, somehow, someone is having a good time.

A smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.

Smoking a cigarette won't send you to hell. It just makes you smell like you've been there.

There are usually two sides to every argument, but no end.

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth!